FOXBORO – The biggest difference between these playoff Patriots and any other this decade? Good health.
Every year since 2012, the Patriots have had at least one major player land on injured reserve during the season and be lost for the playoffs.
IR aside, the Patriots can realistically look at 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015 as seasons that ended with losses almost completely because they took the field for their final game with key players missing or playing at severely reduced levels.
This year? Fresh as a daisy.
The only veteran Patriot the team put on IR this season was cornerback Eric Rowe. He was capably replaced by both Jason McCourty and J.C. Jackson.
The other important guys who landed on IR were newcomers - running back Jeremy Hill, rookie offensive lineman Isaiah Wynn and rookie linebacker Ja’Whaun Bentley. They were poised to make contributions but their regular-season level with the team wasn’t established.
“I think we’ve stayed away from some of the bigger injuries, which we’re very fortunate to do,” said Tom Brady. “And you’re right, I mean, you know my belief on injuries. I think a lot of them are [preventable]. I try to take as much responsibility and accountability for my injuries as possible so that I can be out there. Sometimes you have bad luck in football. It’s obviously a contact sport. You can take a bad hit and that’s your season. Our team’s been very fortunate in that sense this year to not really take those things. The guys have done a great job staying healthy and trying to go week to week.”
It takes seeing the names to really appreciate the toll injuries exacted on previous teams.
Here are some of the key guys from previous years who were off the active roster when the playoffs came (a nod to my guy Zack Cox at NESN who tweeted the full list here):
2017: Julian Edelman, Donta Hightower, Marcus Cannon, Jonathan Jones, Malcolm Mitchell, Nate Ebner, Martellus Bennett.
2016: Rob Gronkowski, Sebastian Vollmer.
2015: LeGarrette Blount, Dion Lewis, Jerod Mayo, Nate Solder, Ryan Wendell.
2014: Aaron Dobson, Jerod Mayo, Stevan Ridley.
2013: Gronkowski, Tommy Kelly, Jerod Mayo, Sebastian Vollmer
2012: Nobody of consequence
2011: Dan Koppen, Andre Carter, Mike Wright.
Aside from IR, the 2012 season was meat when Gronk broke his arm against Houston in the Divisional Playoff and couldn’t play in the AFC Championship against the Ravens.
The 2011 Super Bowl against the Giants was also hosed by a Gronk injury – that one suffered in the AFC Championship against the Ravens. It left him a shell of himself in the Super Bowl. When Aqib Talib got obliterated in the 2013 AFC Championship by Wes Welker, the Patriots were pretty much cooked.
I’m not recalling all these injuries to play the woulda-coulda-shoulda game. It’s all hypothetical anyway.
The greater point is that, as they enter this AFC Championship Game, everybody’s tip-top. It’s astounding. Nothing wrong with Hightower or Gronk. Edelman is tip-top. Both tackles are good-to-go as is the interior offensive linemen. The secondary’s been healthy for weeks.
That can all change within one series, but if you ask what’s a greater advantage, home field or good health? I’d say good health.
“Obviously, you need your best players out there, and the guys that you expect to deliver, you need them playing well,” said Brady. “The only way to play well is to be healthy. If you have a bad whatever and you can’t do your job – if you’re a runner, run, or if you’re a thrower, throw, or if you’re a blocker, block – I mean, it’s hard to do on one arm or one leg. But, if you can feel good and you can feel like you’re trending always toward feeling your best for Sunday, I think that gives you a lot of confidence. Even some of the games we lost this year, I think you come out of those games and you think, ‘Wow, OK. A positive, we didn’t lose anybody.’ I think we’re at this point this year, and we’ve been pretty healthy to this point.”
As recognizable as Brady is as a diet/nutrition/pliability/training devotee, he didn’t resort to the TB12 Method because the Patriots were lagging behind.
As this story from Phil Perry in February 2015 demonstrated, Bill Belichick is as evangelical as anyone about the vital role nutrition plays
And sleep (here’s Phil from February 2017 on the Patriots use of flotation tanks for kickass sleep).
And in 2016, Belichick went wayyyyy in-depth discussing the efforts the team expended after the 2015 season ended with practically half the team out or on the injury report for the last game.
Predictably, Belichick didn’t want to get into a mess of salutes for his medical and training staff two days before the game. Probably feels like bad karma.
But he did allow that, given the focus the team has given to keeping their human resources available, the relative health could be a result of that.
“But,” he added. “I think in the end, it’s a combination of a lot of things. Training is like anything – it helps to have a good plan, it helps to follow the plan, and the players have worked extremely hard. There’s no pill we can take to get in condition or get stronger or get faster or anything. You’ve got to go out there and you’ve got to work at it, and you do that day after day, week after week, month after month, in some cases, year after year, and that’s how you improve, just like anything else.
“So, the players have worked really hard as a total team with a lot of consistency,” he reminded. “I think the work that, as you mentioned, the other people behind in those areas have done has been good, but it’s a combination of a lot of people working together and doing a good job. But, I think you can’t take anything away from the players. In the end, players work to get in condition. Certainly, they need a good plan, good structure – I’m not saying that – but if they don’t work hard at it, then you could have the best plan in the world, and probably aren’t going to have great results.”
Those results have been so good they may have more to do with Sunday’s result than any other factor we whip out.
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